The United Nations should promote "hydro-diplomacy" to defuse any tensions over water in regions like the Middle East and North Africa where scarce supplies have the potential to spark future conflicts, experts said Sunday.

Amid unrest in the Middle East and the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, President Barack Obama is staying the course by going ahead with his five-day trip to Latin America. The first family will depart Friday night for stops in Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, where the president will meet with the leaders of each country to discuss trade and the global economy.

Obama is set to depart Friday night on a five-day trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador — his first journey in the Americas south of Mexico. But with the crises brewing elsewhere, few outside the region may notice.

Today, with popular revolutions upending the political order in the Middle East, an unprecedented natural disaster devastating Japan, and his own government hovering on the verge of shutdown, it may seem odd to many that U.S. President Barack Obama is choosing to embark on a five-day tour of a region often considered an afterthought in international politics.

The photos and videos of the aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami are devastating: freezing and emotionally numbed survivors huddling in makeshift shelters; crowds waiting for fresh food at stores; nuclear technicians struggling to avert a Chernobyl-style meltdown in the Fukushima reactors.

An African Union committee is meeting this week to consider a proposal by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to transform the AU bureaucracy into a powerful continental authority. The eccentric Libyan leader still casts a long shadow over African affairs, even as his 42-year rule is under threat at home.

Kenya's Lake Victoria is in deep trouble, and Israel is partnering with Germany to come to its rescue. How Israel and Germany came to be involved in an African ecological project is a story based on a history of goodwill.

Each president of the United States enters office thinking he will be able to define the agenda and set the course of America’s relations with the rest of the world. And, almost invariably, each confronts crises that are thrust upon him—wars, revolutions, genocides, and deadly confrontations.